LEDs are among the most efficient lighting sources available. LED design and associated luminaire architectures continue to evolve to extract higher efficiencies and greater lighting performance. However, a substantial amount of the power running through an LED is output as heat. For example, LEDs generally convert 25 to 50 percent of the input power to light, with the remaining input power being converted to heat. Accordingly, a main cause of LED performance loss and failure is tied to improper thermal management. Elevated junction temperatures precipitate reductions in recoverable light output and can accelerate chip degeneration. Elevated junction temperatures can also induce undesirable shifts in lighting color. In view of these problems, significant resources have been allocated to the development of heatsinks and other thermal pathways for the efficient removal of heat from the LED assembly. While generally effective, current heatsink designs and thermal pathways have increasingly reached their performance limits and have struggled with addressing thermal requirements of the driver, thereby calling for the development of new thermal management architectures.